With three minutes left in last nights game against the Nashville Predators, Mikko Koskinen attempted a very strange play that left a lot of people scratching their heads.

As you can see, after being pinned in our own end with no momentum going our way, Koskinen attempted to stop play by leaving his crease to cover the puck which was at the bottom of the circle at the time. Koskinen had no stick and attempted the play as a move of desperation in order to slow things down. Once Koskinen leaped on the puck, he picked it up and began carrying it back to his crease. The play was blown dead by the referee, and Koskinen was assessed a two-minute penalty for delay of game.

I noticed a ton of people online confused about the call, and even a lot of the boys at NationHQ thought that what Koskinen did was perfectly legal, as he’s a goalie, and goalies seem to have special rules about oddly specific things. So I thought I’d write an article to clarify the rule that the NHL has in place for this sort of thing, and to give my thoughts on this play.

First, let’s break the NHL rule down:

Boom, there we go. A minor penalty for delay of game will be assessed to any goalie who leaves the crease and covers the puck with the purpose of causing a stoppage of play instead of making a save or cutting down the angle on a shot. The rules for a goaltender in this situation are the exact same for normal skaters: you are not allowed to fall on the puck to cause a stoppage of play.

You may say: “But Koskinen was bringing the puck back to his crease to cover the puck.” Unfortunately for Mikko’s case here, that doesn’t help him. You are not allowed to enclose your hand on the puck and carry it across the ice, even if you’re a goaltender trying to get back to your crease. It was obvious that Koskinen’s main objective was to get a whistle by pouncing on the puck. When he finally got possession of the puck, he thought he could make everything okay by bringing back to his territory, the blue paint. The ref was well aware of this and made the right call on the play. Frankly, the only alternative Koskinen had here to avoid getting a penalty was to quickly release the puck to the corner, without delaying the play even further.

The Nation Dan found another example of a goaltender leaving the crease to cover the puck. It was involving Petr Mrazek in December of 2016. As you can see above, Mrazek does the exact same think Koskinen does by leaving his crease to cover the puck and slow the play down. But this time, the referee refused to blow the whistle and wait Mrazek out. As you can hear in the clip, the referee gave Mrazek several verbal warnings to release the puck and not take a delay of game penalty. Mrazek did eventually release the puck and ended up getting scored on just seconds later.

Obviously, the referee was much more forgiving with Mrazek in this situation. The reason he gave the Red Wings goalie more time to play the puck, in my opinion, had to do with the time of the game. Mrazek tried to pull this off in the second period, whereas Koskinen tried to cover the puck with three minutes remaining in the game, a much more significant time. I think in any other circumstance, the official may have been more patient with Koskinen when he covered the puck and maybe even let him off with a warning. However, as soon as Koskinen stood up to try to carry the puck off the ice, that’s when the official had to draw the line.